'Russian' spy Sutyagin granted right to live in UK, declines offer to find him work

London, July 16 (ANI): The UK Government has granted Igor Sutyagin, one of the "Western spies" Russia handed over to the United States in a Cold War-style spy swap this month, the right to remain in the country indefinitely, but he has declined an offer by the government to help him find work in the near future.

According to The Telegraph, since his arrival in the UK after the 'spy swap deal', he has been staying in a hotel near London in legal limbo. But his brother, Dmitry, said Sutyagin's papers were now in order.

"I do not know what it is called in England but in practical terms it means he now has residency rights in the UK," he said.

However, Dmitry also said that the 45-year-old academic is considering whether to stay in the UK or to return to Russia where he was granted an official pardon as part of the spy swap deal.

Married with two children, he is said to have never wanted to leave Russia in the first place.

His lawyer Anna Stavitskaya has said that a psychologist is working with him and that Sutyagin needs time for "adaptation."

Sutyagin, a former nuclear weapons expert, was one of four men Russia exchanged to get back ten of its own spies who were unmasked by the FBI in a massive surveillance operation that embarrassed the Kremlin.

Earlier, he said that he was wrongly convicted of espionage in the first place but spent more than a decade in Russian maximum-security prisons after being found guilty of selling military secrets to Washington. (ANI)